Tyson Beck – Artist Supreme

The National Basketball Association, to me, is the greatest show on earth. I can easily get lost in my childhood memories of watching my heroes battle it out on the court. What went hand in hand with that time for me was posters and basketball cards… and lots of ’em. Back then the cards in particular were all fairly neutral in their appearance, unless you were lucky enough to get your hands on some packets of Skybox.

The kids of today are a lot luckier than I am if they’re into collecting cards and posters. The new-school of design has taken the look of these collectibles to a whole new level and one person responsible for this is a 25 year-old bloke from Adelaide, Australia named Tyson Beck.

While Tyson is an avid Los Angeles Laker fan, that doesn’t stop him from applying his amazing talents to a wide range of athletes from other teams and in fact, other sports all together. All you need to do is scroll through his Twitter timeline to see all the different projects he’s been involved with. Tyson has seen some amazing success so far and it’s all extremely well deserved.

I’ve followed Tyson’s work for a while now but the piece that caught my eye most recently was this little beauty of Warriors MVP candidate, Steph Curry.

While I’m obviously somewhat biased, there’s something truly exciting about seeing a young guy from Australia produce world-class content that is endorsed 100% by the NBA itself.

I spoke to Tyson recently to get a better idea of his journey within the design industry. I may have also attempted to recruit him as a Warriors fan.

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Hendo: How did you get into design?

Tyson: My first experience with design was back when I was 14. I would just play around on Photoshop for fun until it became an obsession. I was up until 2-3am most school nights on my parent’s computer in my garage making basketball designs, just for personal interest as there was no social media at the time. With that process I fell in love with the craft of design and my other love was basketball, so why not join the two together?

H: A lot of people will have seen your Los Angeles Lakers-inspired work, can you tell us some of the other things you’ve been working on?

T: Recently I have been doing a lot of designs for the NBA and did so heavily for the (recent) All-Star Weekend. Most noticeably you’ll see them on the NBA social media accounts. I’ve also produced the artwork for Topps Fire Football, which is Topps’ new NFL card series that went on sale this month.

H: How did this amazing Steph Curry project come about?

T: Late last year one of my old Steph Curry artwork pieces was sold exclusively on the NBA Store via Fanatics Authentic. It was framed and autographed and sold out in it’s first few hours. So with the success of the first project a second piece was asked to be created for Steph and his fans.

H: Just quickly, with Kobe sidelined until next season, will you consider jumping ship to the Warriors for this season?

T: Short answer. No. Haha!

H: What’s next on the project timeline?

T: I’m doing some work with Panini going forward on NBA memorabilia which is exciting, hopefully it will be on sale soon!

H: What’s Tyson Beck’s ultimate/dream project?

T: That’s so hard, there’s so much I want to do. I think re-branding an NBA team would be up there. When people think of my work they tend to think of crazy effects and styles but I have a strong interest in simplistic stylised work, just no clients request that from me! (laughs)

Another dream project would be helping to create a short film/documentary of an iconic athlete like Michael Jordan, and telling a story of their career through images/animation mixed in with footage.

H: Finally, where can people view/purchase your work?

T: At the moment behance.net/tysonbeck is the best place while I’m currently rebuilding tysonbeck.com (but stay tuned for that!)